Federation Management
1 Introduction
OpenTrack’s Federation Management System has been developed in collaboration with European Athletics, to provide a streamlined and low-cost way to manage athletes, coaches, clubs, and competitions. We currently work with national federations in more than a dozen countries to make their athletics administration simple.
Federation officials can
- Manage and approve athlete licences
- Manage club affiliations
- Make use of OpenTrack’s Competition Management System to manage competitions from small-scale open meetings to major national and international championships
- Record medical exam certificates and dates
- Communicate with clubs, officials, and athletes within their federation
Club representatives can
- Add and manage club members
- Add a coach
- Request annual licenses from the federation
- Make team entries to competitions
Athletes can
- Enter competitions individually
- Customise their athlete profiles
- View their progress in national rankings (data provided in partnership with Tilastopaja)
In partnership with Tilastopaja, we offer a complete solution for national rankings and athlete biographies, covering all age groups and all registered athletes.
2 Federation Management
2.1 Data Visibility
OpenTrack understands that not everyone should see the same data, and with varying levels of access from federation administrators down to athletes themselves, ensuring only the right people have access to the right information is easy.
2.2 Club Administration
Club administrators can add new athletes, manage existing members, and check/update members’ current status with the club, federation, or other body in the sport.
Outside of federation-level tasks, club admins can manage their club’s colours, enter athletes into competitions, or manage competitions of their own, within OpenTrack’s Competition Management System.
2.3 Licence Management
Athlete licences are an important source of revenue for federations, but managing these without a proper solution can be challenging and time-intensive.
Using OpenTrack, issuing new licences and managing existing ones is simple, whether for individual athletes or entire clubs.
Managing licences on OpenTrack means that when using our Competition Management System, athletes’ eligibility can be checked before they step foot on a track, leaving you to focus on what really matters come competition day!
With reports that can be generated on-demand, or with a pre-determined frequency, you’ll always have the clearest possible picture of who is in the sport.
For federations giving bib numbers to athletes for an entire season, this can also be managed and automated, and full integration with our Competition Management System means one less thing to do during competition preparation.
“Licensing insertion and verification is almost gone (before it took 1-2 months).
Bibs distribution and preparations for completion is much quicker (before it took 3-4 days, now 3-4 hours).”
Sirje Lippe, General Secretary, Estonian Federation
2.4 Competitions and Entries
OpenTrack’s Competition Management System provides an easy and robust way to manage and deliver competitions, from grassroots to the world stage, and can be used by federations, clubs, or any other event organiser.
With multiple ways to enter competitions, suited to all manner of competition type, OpenTrack reduces the barriers to getting athletes active and competing!
For competitions using individual entries, athletes can use their OpenTrack profile to enter meetings anywhere in the world, while our team entries process is perfect for clubs looking to enter their athletes in bulk.
“We planned to run the new entry system in parallel with spreadsheets for a new competition, but after one hour the clubs said they were not going back…”
Kristel Berendsen, Competition Manager, Estonian Federation
2.5 Multiple Languages
We understand that English is not everyone’s first language, and OpenTrack has been designed with translation in mind. With multiple languages already available to our FMS users, adding your own is simple.
“One of our objectives was to have our results available in Greek.
OpenTrack’s user-friendly system has allowed us to do this.”
Katia Evangelou, Administrator, Cyprus
3 Managing Competitions
Countries adopting OpenTrack’s Federation Management System get full access to the Competition Management System for their national-level events.
Seamless entries, easily navigable start lists and results, and two-way integrations with multiple statistical partners all provide a top-level experience for athletes, coaches, parents, and fans, with federation officials benefiting from the comfort of working with a fully documented and constantly developing system.
More details on our Competition Management System can be found here.
4 Open Data and Integrations
With OpenTrack, you will always have full access to all of your data, and will never be asked to pay to access it.
We aim to make as much non-personal information public as possible, so that athletes, coaches, and parents can quickly spot mistakes, and report or correct them; and so that volunteers can do exciting things with the data.
We recognize the need to integrate with other systems and import and export data freely, so we make it as easy as possible to retrieve data in machine-readable formats like JSON, Excel, and PDF.
Competition organisers have full access to data on their competitors, and federation staff can access everything in their country.
For developers, we already have JSON URLs, APIs and Push notifications - all the tools you need to turn OpenTrack data into something spectacular. Just get in touch!
As well as providing data, and we also collect information from a variety of sources to keep things running smoothly, including Tilastopaja, World Athletics, and the Power of 10.
You can read more in our Open Data Policy.
5 Testimonials and Feedback
“Our federation is more visible - the number of website visitors has increased.
The work for all involved parties has been simplified – federation people, club managers, coaches, athletes, statisticians.”
Sirje Lippe, General Secretary, Estonian Federation
“You shouldn’t just be recommending OpenTrack, you should be mandating it!”
Milan Pedalo, General Secretary, BIH Athletics Federation
6 Next Steps
Does OpenTrack sound like the solution to streamline your federation, and save the hours of admin time that could be better spent delivering athletics for your athletes?
Get in touch at info@opentrack.run and we will be happy to provide a demonstration on a video call, or simply provide more information about how you can make your athletics easier.
The Federation Management system was originally part-funded by European Athletics to help with the growth of the sport, and they and World Athletics can give financial support to developing nations to digitize using ours and similar systems. You can contact their development departments for more information.